Love is for Children
by YuTzi
Summary: She always said love was for children. She never denied loving him either.
1. Chapter 1

She held him close, reveled in his warmth, reassured herself she was still there.

He killed, countless blank faces, sniped and shot and hit to protect her. Only her.

She seduced, trailed milk white fingers up faces, poisoned and lied and assassinated quietly in the dead of night. For him.

Both broken _(do you know what it is to be unmade)_, hiding away love _(love is for children), _looking for the next time they can gaze upon the other.

They aren't pretty. It isn't high-life-adrenaline-guns-gadgets-dresses. It's dirty-corruption-killing-fucking-terror. That's their life. Each mission, they come back to each other, and touch.

They've never had sex. Not because they can't biologically, not because they don't want to, not because they don't love each other.  
Well.

He remembers no-arousal, confusion, terror, and fucking until he's raw. He remembers pain and fear and being used, one person after another. He remembers gags and sweat and sour breath and leather. He remembers passing out, and waking up to -it- still going.

She remembers disgust, shame, fear, and pretending to _love it._ She remembers pressure and lives at stake and dirty old men fucking her. She remembers heels and guns and tobacco teeth and hairy bellies. She remembers killing each one, and crying over the ones she loved.

"Clint."  
"Yeah?"  
"Don't you ever do that again. _Ever._ Do you understand me?"  
Her voice was ice and spikes barricaded to hide fear.  
He gave a wet laugh.  
"Don't know if I'll get the chance."

He pulled through. Eventually. He kept the bullet scar (_she traced it every time they touched)_ and promised never to do it again.

_They kissed.  
_"_I thought you said you don't love." he asked.  
"No, I said love is for children." she replied.  
"What's the difference?"  
"I'm a child."  
He laughed._

It wasn't enough. He stared in disbelief because no one- _no one_ should(can) kill the Black Widow. He doesn't _understand. _Her skin is pale, and blood is seeping out of the hole in her head. He is shaking, and there is no sound. The Black Widow cannot have emotion. The Black Widow never dies. The Black Widow never takes a bullet for her lover.

He's right. The Black Widow doesn't. Natasha Romanoff does.

The rest of the Avengers find his body the next day. He'd shot himself with her favorite gun.


	2. Chapter 2

Even Tony was silent on their way back to the Avenger's Tower. Surprisingly, Bruce broke the silence.  
"Clint. You know we're here for you." he murmured.  
Clint glanced at him. His face was stone-cold, without a trace of emotion.  
"I know," he said dispassionately.

They grieve together.  
They grieve not for the Black Widow. Not for Agent Romanov.  
For Natasha. For _Nat.  
_  
Things couldn't have gotten any worse. But then they did.  
Thor was the one to discover Clint lying slumped on the roof. He bellowed for the other Avengers and they stared in disbelief because they had already lost one member of their family but losing another? Fate was not kind. They gathered together in a group hug, unable to even cry from the shock. Eventually, they gathered his body and Natasha's, and buried them out in the Midwest, where the land was open and free.

In the workshop, Tony is in his inventing mode. He works and lifts and welds and submerges his mind and body into something, anything besides the fact that Natasha had died. And _Clint had followed her._ Were they not good enough? Was it all fake? Weren't they a mismatched family, made of broken pieces of different puzzles, that shouldn't match, but did, a family that became whole together, not Anthony and Steven and Natasha and Bruce and Clinton and Thor but tony-steve-nat-bruce-clint-thor?  
"Tony."  
Tony ignores him and continues manipulating the specs for Clint's new arrows. The ones he would never get to use.  
"_Tony._"  
That made him look up and stop, because was that Tony who caused Steve to make that pitiful voice that he never wants to hear again and oh no Steve's baby blues are wet and Steve can't cry, Steve should be happy and golden and red-white-blue and perfect and whole.  
While his mind was rambling, Steve's arms had wrapped around him and he collapses, and they both slump into the couch.  
And they both let go and Steve is crying silently, tears running down his face, and Tony is sobbing into Steve's shoulder and they cling to each other like a drowning men in a storm.

Bruce is just sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the wall.  
Friends have left him. Again.  
He is lonely. So is the Other Guy.  
**"Bruce is sad because pointy arrow man hurt himself. Hulk is sad too. Hulk will save him next time."**  
How do you explain suicide to what is essentially a child?  
Bruce curls up on himself, and cries.

Thor has seen many deaths. He has seen deaths of warriors in combat, those of his close friends, and what he thought was the death of his brother. But it still affects him. He sets down Mjolnir and prays silently, to whoever rules the afterlife. He prays that they be together and happy. He grieves.


End file.
